Day: May 1, 2020

I think these are perhaps the last images of tulips for the minute. These are from my garden, and they have given me a great deal of pleasure in these stay-at-home days. I hope you like them, too.

This is ‘Akebono’, a semi-double sport of ‘Jewel of Spring’. It’s a Darwin Hybrid, and its name is Japanese for Dawn, or Daybreak.

Tulip ‘Amazing Grace’, a Double Late tulip, sometimes called paeony-flowered.

Tulip ‘Burgundy’, a Lily-Flowered tulip, with amazing pointy petals.

Tulip ‘Charming Lady’, another Double Late.

Tulip ‘Copper Image’, another Double Late. The picture doesn’t do justice to the colour, which has more of a coppery hint to the petals.

Tulip ‘Exotic Emperor’. This is a Fosteriana tulip, making it very early, very long-lasting, short enough to avoid the worst weather and a stem that seems to have an iron rod in it.

Tulip ‘Flaming Spring Green’. These are the red and white tulips towards the bottom left. It’s not clear in the picture, but they are also flamed with a spine of green on the outer petals. It’s a development of ‘Spring Green’, which is green and cream. ‘Flaming Spring Green’ was a bit patchy for me when first planted, so it was relegated to the orchard (hence the straight line), but it just gets better every year. I love it. If you like it, it pays to shop around. A certain well-known site is offering them for £16.95 for 15. I paid less than half that.

One of our gardeners has sent me an image of one of my favourite tulips.

It’s a Darwin Hybrid (Group 4, in tulip classification). These tulips tend to be tall, statuesque, with large, single goblet-shaped flowers. And they tend to be robustly perennial. Where many other tulips fade away, and fail to flower in subsequent years, not so the Darwin Hybrids. They were first introduced in the 1950’s by the Dutch breeder, DW Lefeber, after he had crossed Tulipa fosteriana ‘Madame Lefeber’ with a number of single late cultivars (known then as Darwin tulips).

If you have seen clumps of pillar-box red tulips come up year after year in old gardens or on council verges, these are one of the earliest and most popular introductions, ‘Apeldoorn’.

Our tulip today is from that stable of Darwin Hybrids. It’s ‘Ollioules’.

‘Ollioules’ has an AGM from the RHS, and well deserved, too. It has rose pink petals shading through cream and ivory white at the edges. Its flowers are long-lasting, both in the garden and in a vase. Its only drawback is if the year brings heavy gales, when the large flowers can be snapped off in exposed positions.

It is named for a medieval French village close to Toulon and the Provençal coast.

It’s readily available, and worthwhile looking out for. My favourite bulb supplier was offering them last year for 36 pence each. Cheap at the price.